LiveJournal tests new portal pages and breaks their search privacy system
At LiveJournal there's a simple checkbox option for whether you want your LJ posts to be indexed by the search engines or not. It is perfectly possible to have a public LiveJournal but still check the box to keep search engines out.
LiveJournal, recently sold to a Russian portal, has recently started to test a portal page system where appropriate recent posts are aggregrated together to form a blog/news splash page.
![](//1.bp.blogspot.com/_0mSxUthxKGI/R6Y_jFpA_2I/AAAAAAAAAek/TWptm9LSZ7Y/s400/lj-portal.gif)
You can access these portal pages by clicking on one of the links in the LiveJournal navigation bar which appears at the top of all LJ blogs. For example, here's a link to the Technology page.
The problem? It's only a small issue but the search engines index these pages. One of the reasons I first took my LJ to the
Here's a sample of the new LiveJournal 'tag portals'.
![](//2.bp.blogspot.com/_0mSxUthxKGI/R6ZAcVpA_3I/AAAAAAAAAes/2kdxnkNVdJQ/s400/lj-lifetag.gif)
You can clearly see the intro to the post from Full Moons Rock. If you pop over to their actual LiveJournal post, though, and take a look at the source code you can see the
![](//3.bp.blogspot.com/_0mSxUthxKGI/R6ZBGlpA_4I/AAAAAAAAAe0/tFzKZVdozbw/s400/lj-noindex.gif)
Ooops. Is there an opt-out for this? Shouldn't LJ be excluding posts which are intented to be omitted from the search engines from these new portal pages?
LiveJournal, recently sold to a Russian portal, has recently started to test a portal page system where appropriate recent posts are aggregrated together to form a blog/news splash page.
![](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_0mSxUthxKGI/R6Y_jFpA_2I/AAAAAAAAAek/TWptm9LSZ7Y/s400/lj-portal.gif)
You can access these portal pages by clicking on one of the links in the LiveJournal navigation bar which appears at the top of all LJ blogs. For example, here's a link to the Technology page.
The problem? It's only a small issue but the search engines index these pages. One of the reasons I first took my LJ to the
noindex
side was because I wanted to be able to mention work by name without trigging a host of Google Alerts (I later went fully private and locked the journal to friends only). If my LiveJournal was noindex
but was syndicated to these portal pages then I would still trigger those Google Alerts.Here's a sample of the new LiveJournal 'tag portals'.
![](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_0mSxUthxKGI/R6ZAcVpA_3I/AAAAAAAAAes/2kdxnkNVdJQ/s400/lj-lifetag.gif)
You can clearly see the intro to the post from Full Moons Rock. If you pop over to their actual LiveJournal post, though, and take a look at the source code you can see the
noindex, nofollow, noarchive
tags in force. (Well. Click on the image and you can see them!)![](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_0mSxUthxKGI/R6ZBGlpA_4I/AAAAAAAAAe0/tFzKZVdozbw/s400/lj-noindex.gif)
Ooops. Is there an opt-out for this? Shouldn't LJ be excluding posts which are intented to be omitted from the search engines from these new portal pages?
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